Files and Stems
A delivery package exists so someone else can continue the work.
Related
The problem
Delivering only a stereo mix ends the collaboration, because nobody can change the bass or swap a sound. The opposite extreme, forty unlabelled files with no tempo, start point or notes, forces the recipient to rebuild the session. The goal of a delivery package is not to send everything but to let someone continue working from where you stopped.
What goes in
A full mix with the requested mastering headroom, and a note if a limiter is engaged. An instrumental and a vocal-only version where relevant. Stems grouped by bus, drums, bass, harmony, lead, vocals, effects, rather than one file per instrument. MIDI for generated parts if the tool exports it, so the recipient can change sounds. Dry and wet versions of anything with reverb or delay. A readme with tempo, key, sample rate, bit depth, session file version and plug-ins used.
Specs and naming
Deliver stems as 24-bit WAV at the project rate, 48 kHz for most video work, 44.1 kHz for music-only, and never upsample a 44.1 kHz render to 96 kHz and call it high resolution. Stems must sum back to the mix, or the gain offsets must be documented. Name files as project, track, version, stem, tempo and date, in ASCII without spaces, with zero-padded version numbers. Keep stem names identical across versions so the recipient's template still works. Open the package once in the recipient's DAW and confirm track count, start point and sample rate; a five-minute check prevents a day of reconstruction.
What to listen for
In the Beethoven String Quartet No. 15, how four voices map onto four clean stems. In the Beethoven Fifth, how many bus groups a large score needs. In the funk loop, whether a single-stem delivery explains its loop point and tail. In the twenty-six minute Toccata, how segmentation and file size become the easily forgotten part of delivery.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- 分轨与工程交付的常见结构，依制作实务通识归纳，未抄原文
- 采样率与位深的取舍，依数字音频公开规范核对，未抄文本
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.